1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to a method and an apparatus for treating a cover tape of a carrier tape carrying electric components (e.g., electronic components), and an electric-component supplying unit, and particularly to the art of easily treating a cover tape of a carrier tape.
2. Related Art Statement
There is known an electric-component ("EC") supplying unit which feeds a carrier tape carrying electric components ("ECs") and thereby supplies the ECs, one by one. The carrier tape includes an accommodating tape having, at a predetermined pocket pitch, a plurality of EC-accommodating pockets accommodating a plurality of ECs, respectively, and the cover tape fixed to the accommodating tape to close respective openings of the pockets. U.S. Pat. No. 5,695,309 discloses an EC supplying unit wherein a carrier tape is wound around a supply reel which is rotatably attached to a main frame of the supplying unit and, after being drawn from the supply reel, is fed at a predetermined pitch and is positioned at an EC-supply portion of the main frame by a carrier-tape feeding device provided on the main frame. The cover tape is peeled from the accommodating tape at a position on an upstream side of the EC-supply portion as seen in a direction in which the carrier tape is fed. The peeling of the cover tape is performed by, e.g., a cover-tape taking-up device and is wound around a take-up reel.
However, various problems are encountered in the case where the cover tape is taken up around the take-up reel. For example, the take-up reel has an upper limit with respect to its size and, when the reel is filled with the cover tape, the cover tape wound around the reel must be disposed of. However, this operation is very cumbersome and time-consuming.
In addition, as the take-up reel takes up the cover tape, little by little, the diameter of the cover tape wound around the reel increases, which leads to changing taking-up conditions, e.g., increasing a length of the cover tape that is wound on the reel by a unit-angle rotation of the reel, lowering a taking-up force of the reel, and increasing a rotational inertia of the reel. Thus, in this case, it is difficult to take up the cover tape in a stable manner in which predetermined lengths of the cover tape are taken up constantly, and a failure is likely to occur in taking up the cover tape.
Moreover, the cover-tape taking-up device and the take-up reel are required to include complex mechanisms, which leads to increasing the production cost of the EC supplying unit and causes disorders to occur to the same.